First Amendment News

The Swiss bank that succeeded temporarily in shutting down wikileaks.org has decided to withdraw its federal court lawsuit against the whistleblower website. The Julius Baer Bank on Wednesday entered a voluntary dismissal of its suit, “without prejudice”–meaning that the bank is keeping open the option of refiling the same suit in another court. The bank acted following a hearing last week in which federal District Judge Jeffrey White ruled that its suit faced major First

NORCAL chapter winners include Chauncey Bailey Project The Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter will honor champions of the First Amendment at the 23rd Annual James Madison Awards. Honorees include Dan Noyes, co-founder of the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting, whose lifetime commitment to in-depth journalism has garnered him the Norwin S. Yoffie Award for Career Achievement. The innovative performing arts instruction of Cliff Mayotte, a teacher at San Francisco’s Lick-Wilmerding High School, will

UCSF last month forced out the Dean of the medical school, David Kessler, over a dispute about internal finances. At the time of Kessler’s dismissal, the university declined to give Kessler, or to make public, a financial audit conducted by an outside and independent auditing firm, KPMG. The university said it was bound by a confidentiality agreement with the auditor, notwithstanding that the report normally would be viewed as a public record. On Monday, however,